Nobody reads this blog, and that's okay.

Perhaps someone has been reading, but I really have no idea. I haven't gotten any comments and no one has mentioned reading it to me. I'm in this whole Iron Blogger thing, and maybe that causes people to read the other posts in it, but there are, what, 40 of us? And most of the rest of the blogs are about version control and other things that make me feel like they probably are not super interested in my blog.

I don't have an audience I'm writing for, and that's fascinating. I haven't kept a personal diary in years, and all other writing has been for some audience, whether it's a personal email, a paper for a professor, a zephyr(*) for unknown numbers of MIT people, tweets for potentially the entire world... and that always strongly shapes what I say. With this blog, my only real goal is to write a bit more seriously and formally than I do in other fora, and to be accessible to a wider audience. I suppose that means I do have an audience I am writing for, but it is defined by what it is not, instead of what it is. My audience did not go to MIT, and does not have a degree in Comparative Media Studies. My audience is not a fangirl, but is generally aware that American media exists. My audience does not play LARPs or go to Burning Man. My audience is not sexually or socially deviant. My audience does not live in Boston. My audience basically has nothing in common with me, I suppose. I want to be able to write for people who little to nothing in common with. I would like to able to take all the things that are important to me and explain them clearly and compelling to people who are unaware and uninterested. I'd really love to have a book published someday, and this blog aspires to be practice for that, though I haven't really lived up to that potential yet. "Maybe Next Week". Is that a motto of Iron Blogger? It should be.

* MIT's internal IM/IRC-like chat system. It has the strange evolved property that people constantly have group conversations where they have no idea who might be listening it, and any one of thousands of people affiliated with MIT could be.

Oscar Spoilers!

Kathryn Bigelow just won an Oscar for Best Director! I AM SO EXCITED! It is *incredibly* hard for women to make it as directors, or in much of the high-powered parts of Hollywood. In 2008, 9% of the top 250 films were directed by women! And NPR says that was a lot! Check out this story, which I heard when it first aired last summer. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106402458 It contains great lines such as: "It's like jumping into an orgy while you're still shaving your legs."

Within five minutes of Bigelow's win, I was editing wikipedia because the page for "The Hurt Locker" had been defaced by someone upset that Tarantino didn't win. The vandalism was claiming that Bigelow had only won due to performing sexual favors on men! Ha ha ha isn't that funny! I mean, whatever, random wikipedia vandalism, but it got my attention. I am just so excited. I really, really hope this means something! Right now I feel like running off to film school. :-)

"Precious" looked just so heart rending, I haven't seen it. I heard a lengthy interview with the director, and just listening to him talk about the cycles of violence and suffering was enough for me. He did open calls looking for an actor for "Precious", and found lots of random fat girls in stores and the like, and gave them a chance, and in the end was concerned about being exploitative, and actually here's the link. I haven't listened to it since it aired, but I remember it being painful and good. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120092180

Still on "Precious", I'd really like for Gabourey Sidibe to get more roles! She got a nomination for Best Actress in her first role! I really want to see more fat women in non-comic roles on screen. Male actors are allowed to be fat, women aren't, and it's just another thing that irritates me about Hollywood.

And finally, I enjoyed the dancing, and I don't understand why so many people react to modern dancing with "ugh people flailing on stage". It irks me.